Wireless communication systems may support discontinuous transmission in which the various parties to a communication link use resources only as needed. Limiting the allocation and consumption of resources to those devices actively engaged in communications increases the capacity of a wireless communication system. However, each device may need to request an allocation of resources before it is granted the opportunity to communicate. The request and grant of communication resources can itself consume a large amount of resources that otherwise could be used to support additional users or provide increased bandwidth to active users.
It is desirable to minimize the amount of resources consumed in requesting and allocating resources for discontinuous communications. However, there remains the need to maximize the flexibility in generating access requests and allocating the resources associated with the access requests.